ART: Andrew Moncrief and the Masculine Tipping Point

Andrew Moncrief’s exhibit “A Strange Feeling,” which recently opened at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, finds the narrow boundary between sportsmanship and sexuality. His large-scale canvases are layered in brush strokes as muscular and energetic as the wrestlers he depicts.

We have watched Turkish oil wrestling and UFC matches with slack-jawed wonder at the blatantly homoerotic action, only to see our straight friends scratch their heads in denial at the potential sexual nature of these events. Moncrief captures the very moment when the participants in the grapple may be waking up to the possibility that winning the match may have to be redefined.

Andrew Edward Moncrief is an emerging artist born and raised on Vancouver Island, presently based out of Montreal. He works in varying media, focusing primarily on painting and drawing with an affinity for classical techniques and utilizing photography as the basis of his predominantly figurative oeuvre.